Re:Great Male Renunciation
by marginalia_nu on Sunday October 22, 2023 @05:08PM
(#37979105)
Cars were an arguably overvalued novelty at the time.
The more fundamental question should be something like, do you need to work to put food on your table.
If yes, then you are not wealthy.
Here in Berlin, we have a "pfand" (deposit) on various bottles. At a summer barbecue you sometimes get people asking to take your bottles away, so they can collect that deposit themselves.
For the larger bottles, just four per day would equal the income of a pre-industrial farmhand.
Re:Great Male Renunciation
by marginalia_nu on Sunday October 22, 2023 @06:14PM
(#37979574)
..., ignoring inflation.
No, that's inflation adjusted.
If I ignored inflation it would be eight month's wages.
This is the thing, no. _Even adjusted for inflation_, the pre-industrial working class (and the early-to-mid-industrial working class, for that matter) was paid barely anything. This was recognised as a problem at the time, even; a lot of the push for the reform of the Corn Laws in Britain, say, came from capitalists, who were, rightly, concerned that the working class _couldn't actually afford to buy any of their products_ (this largely played out; once they were repealed, living costs fell, wages rose, and the consumer market expanded greatly).
With respect to material culture - so also with respect to what clothing styles and fashions are possible - anybody who can afford a car is far richer than people who had servants a hundred years ago.